The 

Service 
of  the  - 
Educated 
Negro 


By 

R.OSCOC 
Con  kl  inf* 
Bruce 


SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  NEGRO 

|J  ADDRESS  OF  ROSCOE  CONKLING  BRUCE 
OF  TUSKEGEE  INSTITUTE  AT  THE  COM- 
MENCEMENT EXERCISES  OF  THE  M STREET 
HIGH  SCHOOL  METROPOLITAN  A.  M.  E. 
CHURCH  WASHINGTON,  D.  C,  JUNE  16,  1903 


Copyright  1943 
C.  W.  B.  Bruc* 


1'uskegee  Institute  Steam  Print. 


SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  NEGRO. 


When  George  William  Curtis  had  received  from  Har- 
vard her  greatest  degree,  he  arose  at  the  Alumni  Dinner 
and  said,  “In  the  old  Italian  story  the  nobleman  turns  out 
of  the  hot  street  crowded  with  eager  faces  into  the  cool- 
ness and  silence  of  his  palace.  As  he  looks  at  the  pictures 
of  the  long  line  of  ancestors  he  hears  a voice, — or  is  it  his 
own  heart  beating? — which  says  to  him  noblesse  oblige. 
The  youngest  scion  of  the  oldest  house  is  pledged  by  all 
the  virtues  and  honor  of  his  ancestry  to  a life  not  unworthy 
his  lineage.  . . When  I came  here  I was  not  a nobleman, 
but  to-day  I have  been  ennobled.  The  youngest  doctor  of 
the  oldest  school,  I too,  say  with  the  Italian,  noblesse 
oblige.  I am  pledged  by  all  the  honorable  traditions  of 
the  noble  family  into  which  I am  this  day  adopted”.  . . You, 
my  friends,  are  ennobled  by  the  diploma  of  a school,  rich 
in  traditions  of  high  endeavor  and  actual  service.  Shall 
those  traditions  fail  to  enter  your  hearts,  and  to  quicken 
your  energies,  and  to  chasten  your  ambitions?  This  ques- 
tion you  are  not  now  competent  to  answer,  and  you  will  not 
be  competent  until  you  have  lived  your  lives. 

Your  equipment  for  the  business  of  life  is  not  contempti- 
ble. As  workers  you  have  some  acquaintance  with  the  nat- 
ural resources  of  our  country,  and  the  ways  in  which  they 
have  been  utilized  in  the  production  and  distribution  of 
commodities  through  the  perfecting  of  industrial  organiza- 
tion and  the  applying  of  science  to  work.  More,  import- 
antly, you  possess  in  varying  degrees  a group  of  valuable 


4 SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  NEGRO. 

industrial  qualities, — that  ambition  without  which  work  is 
drudgery  and  enlargement  of  life  unsought  and  unattain- 
able; that  habit  of  earnest  endeavor  which,  established  by 
continuous  attention  to  Greek  or  Latin,  mathematics  or  his- 
tory, may  be  utilized  in  the  school  room,  or  on  the  farm,  or 
in  the  court  room;  that  habit  of  self-control  which  enables 
men  to  sacrifice  vagrant  impulse  to  sober  duty;  that  resource- 
fulness which  discovers  better  methods  of  getting  work 
done;  that  directing  intelligence  by  which  one  man  can 
effectively  organize  fora  given  purpose,  many  materials  and 
many  workers.  In  addition  to  the  knowledge  and  thequalities 
I have  mentioned,  most  of  you  have  a settled  disposition 
toward  some  form  of  self-support  appropriate  to  an  excep- 
tional training;  while  you  know  that  some  men  must  black 
other  men’s  boots,  you  also  know  that  a boot-black  with  a 
high  school  diploma  at  home  means  waste — waste  of  time, 
waste  of  money,  waste  of  education.  Moreover,  you  ap- 
preciate the  duties  and  value  the  privileges  of  citizenship  in 
a democracy,  and  most  of  you  have  on  the  whole  a serious 
intent  to  do  what  you  reasonably  can  to  promote  the  gen- 
eral welfare.  Such  is  your  equipment  as  citizens.  Finally, 
as  human  beings,  you  are  able  to  participate  in  the  intellec- 
tual, aesthetic,  and  moral  interests  of  cultivated  people. 
How  may  you  with  such  equipment  be  really  useful  under 
the  conditions  of  American  life?  That  is  our  problem. 

And  right  here  let  me  say  that  nobody  wishes  you  to 
make  a profession  of  uplifting  your  race.  In  the  first 
place,  that’s  a pretty  big  job;  and  in  the  second 
place,  your  race  is  uplifted  whenever  one  of  you  manages 
well  a truck  farm,  a grocery  store,  a school  room,  or  a 
£>anl<;  Charity  begins  at  home;  your  chief  business  should 


SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATEDJNEGRO.  5 

be  to  uplift  each  himself.  My  present  purpose,  however, 
is  to  consider  mainly  how  such  individual  success  may  con- 
tribute to  the  welfare  of  the  many. 

Let  us  consider,  first  of  all,  how  you  may  be  of  direct 
service  by  work  in  which  the  chief  factor  is  personal  influ- 
ence and  by  work  in  which  the  chief  factor  is  directing  in- 
telligence. 

Teaching  is  an  art  inseparable  from  the  personality  of 
the  teacher, — an  art  in  which  a mature  person  seeks  by  per- 
sonal influence  to  help  immature  persons  build  their 
characters  soundly.  Teaching  ability,  to  adapt  the  words 
of  Cardinal  Newman,  “is  not  a mere  extrinsic  or  accidental 
advantage  which  is  ours  to-day  and  another’s  to-morrow, 
which  may  be  got  up  from  a book  and  easily  forgotten 
again,  which  we  can  command  or  communicate  at  our  pleas- 
ure, which  we  can  borrow  for  the  occasion,  carry  about  in 
our  hands  and  take  into  the  market;  it  is  an  acquired  illu- 
mination, it  is  a habit,  a personal  possession  and  an  inward 
endowment”.  The  best  way  to  become  a good  teacher  is, 
therefore,  to  become  a good  man  or  a good  woman,  and  to 
grow  in  power  to  interest  and  influence  young  people.  Such 
personality  and  power  cannot  be  manufactured  to  order, 
but  are  slowly  developed  by  much  reading  and  thinking  and 
doing  and  no  little  contact  with  wholesome  people.  In 
Charles  Francis  Adams’  pungent  address,  at  Cambridge  in 
1883,  he  said,  “In  these  days  of  repeating  rifles,  my  alma 
mater  sent  me  and  my  classmates  out  into  the  strife 
equipped  with  shields  and  swords  and  javelins.  We  were 
to  grapple  with  living  questions  through  the  medium 
of  the  dead  languages.”  While  thus  sharply  criticizing  the 
content  of  the  curriculum,  Mr.  Adams  would  have  been  the 


6 SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  NEGRO. 

first  to  maintain  that  to  breathe  the  atmosphere  of  a univer- 
ty  is  an  assured  way  of  getting  broadened  culture,  and  that 
this  atmosphere  is  made  largely  by  the  teachers.  Frederick 
Douglass  had  no  university  degree,  but  he  was  certainly  a 
man  of  culture;  his  teachers  were  among  the  choicest 
spirits  of  an  aroused  generation — Sumner  and  Garrison  and 
Wendell  Phillips — and  they  gave  him  breadth  and  balance 
and  clear-sightedness.  Charles  Francis  Adams  was  set  upon 
the  highway  of  modern  culture  despite  the  curriculum; 
Douglass  received  that  grace  which  is  of  the  spirit  of 
literature  without  the  curriculum.  Both  men  were  deeply  in- 
debted to  noble  teachers.  The  thing  that  makes  one  man 
really  different  from  another  is  not  so  much  knowledge  as 
character;  and  the  thing  that  makes  one  school  different 
from  another  is  not  so  much  curriculum  and  apparatus,  as 
teaching  body.  Algebra  and  trigonometry,  Greek  and 
Latin,  history  and  political  economy,  the  student  will  for- 
get; but  he  will  not  forget  a teacher  gentle  but  earnest,  of 
disinterestedscholarshipand  life-long  devotion.  The  specific 
teaching  may  be  quite  erased  from  the  memory,  but  in  the 
heart  will  be  left  a deepening  respect  for  the  teacher. 

Many  of  you  are  to  become  class-room  teachers.  Re- 
member that  teaching  ability  is  an  inward  endowment;  re- 
jnember  that  a morally  stunted  man  or  a ribbon-loving 
woman  cannot  be  an  effective  teacher.  The  most  searching 
critic  of  character  I ever  knew  was  a barefoot  boy  whose 
laughing  eyes  danced  over  the  pages  of  the  fourth  reader; 
an  intuitive  philosopher  he!  School  boy  opinion  has,  I doubt 
not,  many  vagaries  but  on  the  whole  its  essential  decisions 
as  to,  teachers  are  amazingly  correct.  Whether  you  teach 
geography  by  the  Oswego  Method,  is  not  greatly  to  the 


SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  NEGRO. 


7 


point;  whether  you  have  won  the  confidence  of  your  class — 
that  is  the  main  issue;  and  that  conquest  is  not  made  by  the 
sword  of  discipline  but  by  the  spirit  of  vigorous  goodness. 

Moreover  the  genuine  teacher  knows  that  his  duty  is 
not  bounded  by  the  four  walls  of  the  class-room.  He  is 
dealing  with  boys  and  girls  to  be  sure,  but  he  is  dealing  with 
more — with  social  conditions.  The  life  and  work  of  the 
community  he  must  study  quite  as  much  as  he  must  study 
the  child.  Indeed,  child  and  man  are  largely  products  of 
social  conditions.  The  educated  teacher,  by  friendly  visits 
to  homes  and  by  cheerful  work  in  churches  and  societies, 
will  seek  to  elevate  community  opinion  and  the  standard  of 
life  and  work.  A crowded  unclean  home  in  an  undrained 
street,  is  almost  as  much  an  object  of  concern  to  the  edu- 
cated teacher  as  is  a hopeless  little  dunce  who  can’t  spell 
“rabbit!”  Let  us  ground  child-study  in  community  study. 

This  knowledge  of  the  life  and  work  of  the  community 
will  react  upon  the  program  of  study.  The  educated 
eacher,  I have  said,  aims  at  raising  somewhat  the  level  of 
life  in  the  community.  The  program  of  study  is  an  instru- 
ment for  that  end.  A school  unresponsive  to  the  needs  of 
actual  life  is  a school  preparing  for  Utopia.  The  universi- 
ties and  the  public  schools  of  the  Western  States  illustrate 
what  I mean:  for  example,  the  University  of  California  has 
recently  introduced  a course  in  irrigation.  And  here  in  the 
East,  Cornell  teaches  poultry  raising.  For  an  unserubbed 
population  the  school  should  emphasize  cleanliness;  for  a 
a propertyless  population,  foresight  and  thrift.  Let  me 
speak  even  more  definitely.  In  this  city  of  Washington,  as 
in  other  urban  communities,  the  death  rate  of  the  Negro 
population  is  exceedingly  high.  This  excessive  death  rate 


8 


SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  FEGRO. 

is  due  to  a variety  of  causes;  relatively  low  economic  posi- 
tion is  a powerful  cause.  Thus,  one  of  the  largest  indus- 
trial insurance  companies  in  the  United  States  finds,  I learn, 
that  the  death  rate  of  Negroes  is  practically  the  same  as 
that  of  whites,  in  approximately  the  same  industrial 
occupations;  and  there  is  much  more  evidence  to  the  same 
effect.  In  addition  to  the  teaching  of  hygiene,  the  school 
may  aim  to  remedy  the  conditions  expressed  in  the  high 
death  rate,  in  two  ways,— first,  through  imparting  produc- 
tive capacity  by  the  training  of  hands;  and  second,  through 
developing  wants  by  the  touching  of  hearts  and  arousing  of 
minds. 

Already  you  have  a manual  training  high  school  and 
through  the  grades  certain  work  in  carpentry  and  sewing 
and  cooking.  The  increasing  efficiency  of  all  such  work 
should  be  welcomed  and  actively  aided  by  every  educated 
teacher.  After  a while,  let  us  hope,  the  schools  here  will 
offer  from  one  end  to  the  other,  such  teaching  of  the  indus- 
trial arts  as  will  prepare  students  worthily  to  maintain 
themselves  under  severe  economic  stress.  Do  you  realize 
that,  despite  the  enlargement  of  educational  opportunities 
in  Washington  and  the  growth  of  the  Negro  population, 
there  are  probably  here  to-day  fewer  Negro  artisans  than 
there  were  in  1870?  Here  is  a profound  need,  and  for  the 
schools  a rare  opportunity.  Moreover,  the  school  life  of 
most  children  is  short,  not  over  five  or  six  years.  If  the 
school  possessed  adequate  facilities  for  giving  industrial  ca- 
pacity, more  parents  would  be  willing  and  able  to  let  their 
children  remain  in  school  seven  and  eight  and  nine  years. 
The  schools  and  the  cultivated  portion  of  this  community 
cannot  afford  to  give  those  who  ask  for  bread  a stone.  We 


SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  NEGRO. 


9 


must  send  the  whole  boy  to  school  and  not  merely  his  head! 

Not  for  a moment  do  I decry  that  important  function 
of  the  schools,  which  I have  called  the  development  of 
wants.  Human  wants  are  social  forces.  Corn  and  cotton 
are  grown  to  supply  certain  bodily  wants;  the  fine  arts  are 
cultivated  in  response  to  certain  aesthetic  wants;  philosophy 
and  pure  science  are  elaborated  at  the  quiet  insistence  of 
certain  intellectual  wants;  religion  is  preached  to  assuage 
certain  spiritual  wants.  Every  voluntary  act  is  the  hand- 
maid of  some  want.  Now,  it  is  the  fundamental  business 
of  the  schools  to  enlarge  the  range  of  the  students’  inter- 
ests and  wants,  to  stir  up  a divine  discontent.  The  saddest 
thing  about  the  Negro  peasant  in  his  windowless  cabin  in 
Georgia,  the  saddest  thing  about  the  Negroes  in  the  filthy 
shanties  of  Mobile,  New  York,  and  Washington,  is  not  so 
much  poverty,  as  slovenly  unconcern.  What  all  such  peo- 
ple need — be  the}’  white  or  black,  red  or  yellow — is  the  de- 
velopment of  wants— wants  for  better  things.  A man  of 
moderately  developed  wants  will  exert  himself  to  get  a 
steady  job  under  healthful  conditions,  to  get  a comfortable 
house  to  live  in— three  or  four  sunny,  pleasantly  furnished 
rooms  and,  if  possible  a garden  for  vegetables  and  flowers — 
yes,  he  will  exert  himself  to  win  a wife  to  make  that  house 
a home.  Such  wants  (and  they  are,  you  will  note,  not  im- 
possibly spiritual)  every  school  ought  to  tend  to  develop. 

In  short,  the  development  of  the  wants  of  sober  men 
and  the  giving  of  the  skill  to  buy  the  means  of  satisfying 
those  wants — these  two  things  are  vital  to  the  work  of  the 
school.  Let  me  be  clearly  understood;  the  school  should 
of  course  develop  the  more  spiritual  wants,  wants  for  the 
things  that  give  literature  and  art  and  religion  their  values. 


IO 


SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  NEGRO. 


These  spiritual  things  are  the  headwaters  of  the  fullest  and 
deepest  and  highest  enjoyments  of  life.  But  these  matters 
have  long  been  emphasized  in  the  traditions  of  school-men; 
moreover,  when  the  flesh  is  weak,  the  spirit  is  not  very 
strong.  My  wish  just  now  is  to  emphasize  the  things  that 
lie  at  the  basis  of  race  maintenance  and  progress. 

The  considerations  brought  forward  exhibit  the  oppor- 
tunities of  the  teacher  and  the  high  significance  of  the 
teacher’s  work. 

Teaching  and  preaching  are  very  much  alike.  Phillips 
Brooks  said  very  truly'  that  preaching  is  the  bringing  of  truth 
through  personality.  Some  of  you  will  prepare  yourselves 
to  preach;  all  of  you  will  have  to  do  with  preachers.  There 
is  no  lack  of  preachers  but  there  is  much  lack  of  good 
preachers.  The  preacher  has  the  entree  to  the  firesides  of 
the  people.  The  educated  preacher,  like  the  educated 
teacher,  realizes  the  profound  effect  that  the  housing  of  the 
working  classes  exerts  upon  the  morals  and  the  efficiency 
and  the  happiness  of  the  working  classes,  the  profound  ef- 
fect that  surroundings  exert  upon  life  and  character.  The 
preacher  will  use  some  of  the  influence  that  issues  from  his 
superrational  functions  to  make  the  homes  of  the  people 
hygienically  as  well  as  morally  clean,  to  make  those  homes 
more  attractive  than  the  resorts  of  vice. 

Religion  and  the  Church  have,  from  a certain  point  of 
view,  two  main  functions, — first  to  make  peace  between 
human  society  and  assumed  spiritual  beings;  and,  second,  to 
antagonize  anti-social  acts  and  tendencies.  The  first  func- 
tion, religion  performs  for  a horde  of  man-eating  savages  as 
well  as  for  the  congregation  of  St.  Paul’s;  the  second  function 
religion  performs,  characteristically  in  a civilized  society, 


SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  NEGRO.  ii 

by  allying  itself  with  morality.  The  surprisingly  low  death 
rate  of  Jews  wherever  found  is  unquestionably  due  in 
large  part  to  this  alliance  of  religion  and  morality.  In  our 
English  Bible  we  find:— 

“And  God  spake  all  these  words,  saying, 

“Honour  thy  father  and  thy  mother.  . . . 

“Thou  shalt  not  kill. 

“Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery. 

“Thou  shalt  not  steal. 

“Thou  shalt  not  bear  false  witness  against  thy  neigh- 
bour. 

“Though  shalt  not  covet  thy  neighbour’s  house,  thou 
shalt  not  covet  thy  neighbour’s  wife, .. . nor  anvthingthat 
is  thy  neighbour’s. 

“And  all  the  people  saw  the  thunderings,  and  the  light- 
nings, and  the  noise  of  the  trumpet,  and  the  mountain 
smoking”  . . . 

Now,  the  practical  usefulness  of  the  preacher  lies  large- 
ly in  the  fact  that  hesupplies  the  sanctionsfor  right  doing, — 
the  thunderings  and  the  lightnings  and  the  noise  of  the 
trumpet,  the  mountain  smoking,  and  in  all  but  above  all 
Jehovah.  To  show  the  man  in  the  street  or  in  the  cotton 
field  that  for  him  lying  and  stealing  are  bad  because,  if  ev- 
erybody were  a liar  and  a thief,  society  would  fall  to  pieces, — 
that  would  be  very  well,  but  it  would  hardly  make  the  man 
honest  in  word  and  deed.  If,  however,  you  marshal  feel- 
ings of  awe  and  reverence  in  defence  of  honesty,  if  you  get 
God  on  your  side,  your  success  is  more  assured  and  you 
may  develop  a “sensibility  to  principle  which  feels  a stain 
like  a wound.”  The  preacher  fortifies  the  common  morali- 
ties with  these  religious  sanctions  and  that  is  no  easy  busi- 


12  SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  NEGRO. 

ness.  The  preacher  must  himself  be  righteous,  resource- 
ful, sympathetic,  with  the  gift  of  nearness  to  men.  Such 
qualities  education  is  peculiarly  fit  to  bestow  or  to  develop, 
and  hence  an  educated  ministry  is  sorely  needed  by  our 
people  from  Boston  to  New  Orleans. 

An  educated  ministry  would  realize  that  social  settle* 
ments,  gymnasiums,  kindergartens,  day  nurseries,  friendly 
visiting,  homes  for  defectives  and  orphans  and  the  aged 
may  fitly  and  usefully  be  organized  and  maintained  by  the 
church.  By  such  means  the  church  may  tend  to  establish 
a kingdom  of  heaven  on  earth. 

Among  cultivated  Negroes  there  is  apparent  an  unfor- 
tunate tendency  to  look  at  preachers  askance.  This  is  due 
largely  to  reaction  against  bad  preachers,  and  to  failure  to 
understand  and  appreciate  the  temporal  opportunities  of 
the  Church.  I argue  for  the  usefulness  of  good  preachers 
and  of  the  “institutional”  church.  Though  no  member  of 
this  graduating  class  should  become  a preacher  or  a preach- 
er’s wife,  every  member  may  wisely  ally  himself  with  the 
church  and  use  his  personal  influence  to  enlarge  and 
strengthen  church  work,  to  make  it  definite  and  human  and 
nobly  practical. 

So  much  for  the  work  in  which  personal  influence  is  the 
determining  factor.  Medicine  and  business  are  types  of 
the  work  in  which  what  I have  rudely  called  directing  in- 
telligence determines. 

In  the  profession  of  medicine,  I admit,  personal  influ- 
ence and  directing  intelligence  subtly  interlace.  The  Ne- 
gro doctor’s  social  position  makes  him  specially  accessible 
to  Negroes  in  cases  of  need.  As  a friend  of  the  family  or 
of  the  family's  friends,  the  doctor  i$  not  dreaded  as  a feeU 


SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  NEGRO. 


13 

ingless  stranger  with  a terrible  knife.  Moreover,  the  Ne- 
gro doctor  does  not  feel  himself  a man  of  alien  blood  come 
to  tend  an  inferior.  Social  position  and  understanding  sym- 
pathy, then,  render  the  Negro  doctor  readily  accessible  and 
very  useful.  Moreover,  the  Negro’s  physical  condition  of- 
fers the  doctor  large  opportunities  for  noble  service.  In  a 
book  upon  “Ethnic  Factors  in  the  Population  of  Boston,” 
Doctor  Bushee  says,  “In  Boston  the  mortality  of  the  Ne- 
gro is  much  larger  than  that  of  any  other  ethnic  factor”; 
again,  “A  high  death  rate,  instead  of  a low  birth  rate  is 
causing  the  Negroes  to  disappear”;  and  the  statistics  are  not 
much  more  encouraging  in  many  other  urban  communities 
North  and  South.  That  relatively  low  economic 
position  is  a powerful  factor  in  producing  this  alarming 
death  rate,  I have  already  suggested;  another  capital 
factor  is  pitiable  ignorance  of  the  rudiments  of  personal  hy- 
giene and  of  sanitation.  Negro  doctors  may  without  much 
trouble  diffuse  throughout  a community  these  rudiments  of 
knowledge  and  in  so  doing  will  prove  themselves  public 
servants.  North  and  South  the  conspicuous  financial  suc- 
cess and  substantial  social  service  of  hundreds  of  Negro 
doctors  eloquently  establish  the  correctness  of  this  view; 
and  of  practising  physcians,  the  Negro  people  to-day  have 
unmistakably  too  few. 

What  of  the  Negro  business  man?  In  Washington  pub- 
lic employment  and  the  professions  have  captured  most  of 
the  energetic  and  alert  Negroes,  to  the  injury  of  business 
development.  Springfield,  Massachusetts;  Richmond,  Vir- 
ginia; Dayton,  Ohio, — not  one  of  these  important  cities  has 
a total  population  as  large  as  the  Negrq  population  of  the 
District  of  Columbia.  As  buyers  of  goods,  eighty-seven 


14  SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  NEGRO. 

thousand  people  are  important;  but  as  sellers  of  goods,  the 
eighty-seven  thousand  Negroes  in  Washington  are  by 
no  means  important.  For  example,  of  the  total  profits  on 
the  dry  goods  bought  in  a year  by  the  Negro  population  of 
Washington,— profits  amounting  to  thousands  and  thous- 
ands of  dollars,  for  the  ratio  of  expenditure  to  income  is 
exceptionally  large, — what  per  cent,  goes  to  Negro  mer- 
chants? Shall  I say  five  per  cent.,  one  percent.,  or  one  thous- 
andth of  one  percent.?  Mathematical  precision  is,  of  course, 
not  possible  but  you  and  I know  that  practically  none  of 
these  profits  go  to  Negro  merchants.  And  you  and  I could 
name  a dozen  white  merchants  who  have  been  enriched  by 
those  profits.  And  in  consideration  of  this  fact  how  many 
Negro  clerks  have  the  white  merchants  placed  in  their  stores? 
how  many  Negro  floor  walkers?  how  many  Negro  buyers? 
And,  my  friends,  how  many  thousands  of  years  must  elapse 
before  the  Washington  Negro  will  add  to  his  culture 
enough  co-operative  endeavor  and  competitive  power  to 
change  all  this?  I myself  have  never  yet  been  convinced 
that  the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the  Jew  really  need  the  black 
man’s  charity.  Though  I cannot  point  out,  then,  to  the 
members  of  this  graduating  class  openings  in  established 
business  houses,  I can  point  out  that  their  success  in  busi- 
ness will  provide  opportunities  for  some  later  class,  and 
will  help  to  make  the  spending  of  Negroes  enrich  Negroes. 
Let  me  suggest  two  other  ways  in  which  the  Negro  busi- 
ness men  may  be  of  great  service  to  the  many.  In  the  first 
place,  the  rents  charged  Negroes  in  cities,  for  example, 
Washington,  are  considerably  higher  for  the  same  accomo- 
dations than  the  rents  charged  white  people.  By  offer- 
ing good  houses  at  reasonable  rents  to  the  Negro  working 


SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  NECxRO.  i? 

class,  the  Negro  business  man  will  find  a paying  investment 
and  a means  of  much  service.  In  the  second  place,  hotels, 
restaurants,  and  theatres  even  in  the  capital  of  the  nation 
are  open  to  black  men  and  women  onlvon  degrading  terms, 
or  not  open  at  all.  The  closing  of  such  accommodations  is 
really  the  opening  for  black  business  men  of  the  doors  of 
opportunity. 

In  discussing  ways  of  direct  service  I have  then  men- 
tioned teaching  and  preaching  as  types  of  the  work  in  which 
the  decisive  factor  is  personal  influence.  Medicine  and  busi- 
ness I have  mentioned  as  types  of  the  work  in  which  the 
decisive  factor  is  directing  intelligence. 

And  now  I wish  to  discuss  two  ways  in  which  educated 
Negroes  may  be  of  indirect  service, — first,  by  offering  their 
fellows  copies  for  imitation,  and.  second,  by  establishing 
the  dignity  of  the  race.  Tn  t88i,  hardly  a white  man  or  a 
black  man  in  the  country  dreamed  that  in  twenty-two  years 
a Negro  would  have  achieved  the  building  of  a beautiful 
city  in  a Southern  wilderness,  would  have  organized  effi- 
ciently the  business  of  that  industrial  community  of  some 
1700  people,  would  have  won  the  abiding  confidence  of 
white  men  and  black  men  North  and  South,  would  have 
brought  the  white  North  and  the  white  South  into  intelli- 
gent co-operation  in  the  uplifting  of  black  men,  would  have 
worked  out  a solution  for  the  central  problem  in  American 
education,  would  have  been  acknowledged  master  of  arts 
by  the  oldest  university  in  the  land,  would  have  written  one 
of  the  impressive  books  of  the  century,  would  have  been 
asked  by  the  British  Government  for  help  in  the  reconstruc- 
tion of  South  Africa,  would  have  been  called  by  the  sanest 
of  British  pritics  of  affairs  the  rnost  notable  figure  in  thc| 


i6  SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  NEGRO. 

American  Republic!  And  yet,  this  miracle  you  and  I 
see  to-day  with  our  own  eyes.  The  example  of  this  man  is 
being  imitated  in  a hundred  educational  and  industrial  com- 
munities in  the  Southern  States.  And  all  men  feel  more 
respect  for  the  Negro  race  because  out  of  its  loins  has  come 
Booker  T.  Washington. 

A constructive  statesman  like  Washington,  educators 
like  Lewis  Moore  and  Lucy  Moten  and  your  own  Anna 
Cooper,  theologians  like  Bowen  and  Grimke,  scholars  like 
Blyden  and  Scarborough  and  DuBois  and  Kelly  Miller,  in- 
ventors like  Woods  and  McCoy,  a novelist  like  Chesnutt,  a 
poet  like  Dunbar,  a musician  like  Coleridge-Taylor,  a 
painter  like  Tanner — yes,  and,  of  those  who  are  gone, 
Banneker  who  searched  the  heavens;  Toussaint,  soldier  and 
statesman;  Aldridge,  the  tragedian  with  his  first  medal  in 
arts  and  sciences  from  the  King  of  Prussia;  Pushkin,  the 
the  poet  of  the  Russias;  Dumas,  father  and  son;  the  saint- 
ly Crummel;  and  Douglass  the  argument  for  freedom, — I 
say,  the  indirect  service  of  such  people  is  incalculable. 

Now,  for  you  and  me  no  such  careers  are  probable  and 
yet  every  educated  Negro  who  is  worth  his  salt,  is  in  simi- 
lar fashion  a copy  for  imitation  and  serves  to  secure  respect 
for  his  race.  The  Negro  contractor  and  builder;  the  Negro 
who  owns  a well  managed  truck  farm;  the  Negro  school 
teacher,  who  has  saved  money  enough  to  buy  municipal 
bonds  or  shares  in  a railway,— that  person  becomes  in  a 
money  getting  time  a definite  and  concrete  argument  to 
white  men  and  to  black  men  that  black  men  can  be  more 
than  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water,  than  cooks  and 
coachmen.  Fundamentally,  you  and  I by  our  thoughtful- 
ness, our  practical  interest  in  the  happiness  of  others,  our 


SERVICE  BY  THE  EDUCATED  NEGRO.  17 

elevation  above  petty  prejudice,  our  simplicity,  our  decis- 
ive prudence,  our  enduring  energy,  our  devotion,  may  indi- 
rectly count  for  good  in  a thousand  ways  in  the  life  and 
work  of  our  communities. 

And,  now,  my  friends,  you  enter  the  circle  of  educated 
tnen  and  women.  Your  personal  influence  will  be  felt  in 
school  room  and  in  pulpit.  Your  directing  intelligence  will 
count  in  law,  and  medicine,  and  business;  as  able  and  de- 
voted men  and  women,  you  by  your  examples  will  steady 
the  nerves  of  a staggering  people  and  make  the  word  Ne- 
gro more  than  a reproach.  Delicate  indecision,  hesitant 
virtue,  carping  discontent,  bric-a-brac  culture — these  ill  be- 
come stalwart  men  and  robust  women.  By  all  the  honor- 
able traditions  of  the  noble  family  into  which  you  are  now 
adopted,  you  are  pledged  not  to  pick  your  way  daintily  in 
the  soft  places  of  the  earth;  you  are  pledged  to  make  your 
lives  real,  useful,  constructive.  Remember — noblesse 

oblige! 


